


abrazo abierto

by Val Mora (valmora)



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: M/M, Slice of Life, Tango, old unmarried spies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-11 05:39:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12928665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valmora/pseuds/Val%20Mora
Summary: A newly-redone floor, a conversation, a drink. Illya and Napoleon dance, not for the first time, not for the last.





	abrazo abierto

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gothyringwald](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gothyringwald/gifts).



The hall smelled like old cigars and a little like wine and hairspray. Napoleon was used to the old cigars and wine, but not so much so the hairspray. Maybe it was the cleaning chemicals, or whatever kind of wax or polish had been used on the floor.

The floor was nice, though. It had been redone over the summer, and all the old pitfalls and scrapes from chairs, equipment being dropped, street shoes, spilled drinks, were all gone. It looked beautiful, but strange, too.

Illya set a drink in front of him and took the seat on the other side of the small table. Napoleon was a creature of habit: Scotch, neat. Illya, sometime in the last year, had declared that his life was already too short to turn down small excitements, and was drinking something different each time he came, though he usually shared if Napoleon asked.

“What’s it this time?” Napoleon said.

“Simon recommended me calvados,” Illya said. “I didn’t have the heart to say no.”

Napoleon flashed him a small smile: summer, Normandy, Agent Auffray being settled down with her invalid pension in her mother’s house, her mother pressing into Napoleon’s hands a bottle of it, brewed in the town from apples grown in the family orchard. Napoleon and Illya had gotten drunk pretty damn quick. 

Auffray had been - what had been done to her was unconscionable, and Napoleon and Illya had kept in touch: she had been a good agent, and to lose her because of what she’d survived would have been wrong. She was the keeper of the orchard now, and seemed at peace with it, not that she would’ve said if she wasn’t. 

“To Geraldine Auffray,” Napoleon said, raising his glass slightly. Illya echoed him, and they drank.

Napoleon glanced over the crowd and caught sight of María, who’d come earlier than usual, and Napoleon stopped to wave, catching her attention.

“Ah,” she said, when she reached the table. “Napoleon, Illya, it’s so good to see you.” She and Napoleon air-kissed, playfully, and once she sat, Illya and Napoleon both retook their seats.

“How have you been?” Napoleon asked.

“Oh, here and there,” she said breezily with a wink. “A job is a job.”

“But some are better than others,” Illya said.

“Yes, yes.” She waved a hand, almost dismissively. “Thank you for telling me about your friend. That has been working out well, much better than with George. And it pays promptly.”

“We all aspire to such heights,” Illya said. “Would you like a drink?”

“No thank you. I drank too much last week; all the men will think I’m a lush.”

“We would never,” Napoleon said. “As long as you can still dance.”

“Napoleon,” Illya said warmly, “I have seen you lead while nearly dead of pneumonia. Don’t give her bad advice.”

It had been a bad drug interaction, not pneumonia, but close enough to be permissible in front of civilians. Napoleon didn’t miss the regular doses of sleeping drugs, truly.

“I resemble that remark,” Napoleon said, and María laughed into her hand. Illya made a face of mixed fondness and resignation into his drink.

“Yes,” María said, “I am sure you would,” and then she waved across the room at Maxim, excused herself, and was off to greet him - and very likely attempt to slot herself into his first dance of the night, not that Napoleon blamed her; Maxim was a fine dancer, and a good man besides.

“Well,” Illya said. “Are we dancing tonight, or enjoying the view?”

“Both, I hope,” Napoleon said. Illya gave him an unamused look at the acknowledgement that Napoleon had noticed Illya’s hip was giving him trouble, but didn’t argue.

“Save a dance for me, too,” Napoleon said.

“Of course.” Illya always did.

 

Napoleon nursed his drink until the dancing had gotten started, couples working their way slowly around the floor in the large circle at the edge, and then joined in. His knees weren’t what they once were, and it had taken about half an hour for him to warm up properly from having come inside out of the cold. The Scotch helped, of course. Good lubrication for the joints and for the spirit.

He always made a point to dance with the new follows in the crowd early on in the evening, because it was often the habit of halls to want to ignore new faces until they had proved themselves, and that was a good way to drive them off. It was an exercise in getting his toes stepped on, mostly, but he was used to much greater pain than that, so it was easy to say he didn’t mind.

He took María for a spin, too, after that, and asked her how things were going with Maxim, to which she laughed at him.

“I’m not looking for a husband,” she said.

“You wouldn’t have to be,” he said, amused, turning them in a circle while waiting for the next couple along the line of dance to get a move on.

“How forward-thinking of you!” Two steps together, a cross, and then another turn.

“Better than to look back,” he said. “The past is another country, et cetera.”

“In some of our cases, too true,” she said. “Where was your other country?”

“Here and there,” he said. “A little of Japan, a little of France, mostly New York.”

“State?”

“I beg your pardon!” he said, mock-indignant, but was cut off from further outrage by the end of the set.

 

Illya joined in the dancing sometime around ten, with regular breaks for his hip. The cold was doing him no favors, either, and it showed; he sat out the fast sets, and gave his follows gentler, slower movements. More time for showiness, too, which some of them even used.

It was a far cry from how he, and Napoleon, had danced in Argentina those few times twenty years before. Illya treading on toes, flushed with embarrassment and wearing a severe expression to try to cover it. And then in private, Napoleon taking his hand and touching his shoulder, reading each other’s intentions in dance as easily as they did in combat.

Napoleon caught him up for a set around eleven, because he himself was beginning to tire. Illya laughed quietly and turned him.

“No one’s staring,” Napoleon said encouragingly.

“I know,” Illya said. “They’re used to it.”

“Well,” Napoleon said. “The regulars are.”

“And the new faces will become regulars in the end,” Illya said.

“If I have anything to say about it.”

They switched roles: Illya did not follow often. Napoleon sometimes did, if he was trying to teach something. But it was not so hard: listen, pay attention. Move to match the lead. Illya was very good at it, the same way he was good at martial arts.

They stayed hand-in-hand, moving together around the dance floor through the set, and then they returned to their table. It had been a good night. Their friends were there, and soon they would go home - once their breaths had come back - to the little brownstone that Napoleon had inherited and which had become theirs together. Then there would be the day after, and the day after that. And next week, there would be tango again.


End file.
